Put in your hearing aids, I thought. She probably didn’t even know where they were.

“I said, I’m going to check the hives!”

“Whatever! Suit yourself! Don’t be gone long. I’m getting hungry!”

Oh, eat a can of beans, I thought. Didn’t I just feed her? She drove me crazy. My mother, Katherine McNee Jensen, was one colossal pain in the derriere. She kept tabs on me like I was a child (which I was not) and treated me like her personal maid (which I was). If I didn’t have a garden and hives to tend and a volunteer job at the library, I’d go right off the deep end. I had been trying to get a teaching job at Sullivan’s Island Elementary School for years, and the best I could ever seem to get was the occasional substitute job. Because the island was so popular, there was probably a longer waiting list for teaching positions there than there was anywhere else in the state. And I sold my honey at the island’s farmers market and sometimes at the farmers market in Mount Pleasant because I harvested over a hundred pounds, sometimes much more, every year. But eight dollars a jar wasn’t going to make me rich. Eventually, I’d get a break.

I let the wooden screen door slam behind me with a loud thwack and took a long, slow, deep breath. Rise above! And how was I ever going to get out of her house and make a life for myself? I was going nowhere until she did. So, for now, I was a bachelorette, keeping my considerable favors under wraps until the right man came along. The thought of me having considerable favors worth keeping under wraps made me smile. Well, to be completely honest, many right men had come along, but they kept going, straight to the welcoming arms of my sister, Leslie. And anyway, now I had my neighbor Archie’s little boys to keep me busy. I preferred children to adults any day of the week. I’ll get to them in a moment. There’s so much to tell you.